does it really matter what surface we use. All FIRST Robots will be competitive. :D personally i like the carpet. We get to take home pieces of it big and small after the NYC FIRST! Regional takes place. 2001 Most of the carpet came to our school and after 2002 a small portion of it also made it to the robotics room. 2000 we also had a piece of the J&J MidAtlantic Regional carpet:cool: . Besides its much harder to take home a souvenir such as water from a regional/national:p ;) ;)

well, we could always do water, and then when we're done, bottle it and hand it out as souvineers. be the best bottle of water yet! where else can you find nuts and bolts, screws, metal shavings, and best of all, grease! :p

we want a water playing field :D

I would like to see water but not on the whole field. If we were to use the rubber mat idea then we could have water in small sections of the field that teams have the option of crossing. If it spilled just get a towel and dry the mat. Just a thought

Synthetic Ice!

-Joel

heres some ideas:
the pit area flooring at nats
something hard like concrete or wood that cant be 'dug' into
astroturf (heck why not)
dirt, gravel, or any other loose material (would have to be raked after each round but cool none the less)
water would be cool, but why not liquid nitrogen (jk but would be funny)
plastic sheeting (slick and hard to grip especially when waxed)
waxed floor
rubber mats (though these are easily torn)

i mostly would like to see the playing field more uneven (though can make it tough for teams to recreate (maybe make it a surprise surface for each regional, wouldnt that be fun)

Hey how about a playing field where all the carpet is covered in duct tape? :-)

I'm not sure what kind of duct tape you use but any kind I've ever seen would get ripped and peeled up. I do agree that we need something really new for a field. A lot have teams have mastered gaining traction on carpet. Some sort of dirt or sand would be cool but we would bring it back into the pits and it would get everywhere. Gravel would work. As for water, we would have to be required to have a sealed electronics box. This would be very time consuming to make and have access to. Also, teams and FIRST would get tired of constantly replacing electronics. As for surface, I have no idea; rubber tiles, shredded rubber, and gravel all sound good. I would like to see some more obstacles though like steep ramps or hills. Some sort of a pit like a shallow U. Some small stairs. Small drop offs. Possibly ramps that lead up to and down from a second level. Speed bumps. Or howabout moving parts of the field like an elevator or convayer belt. I would go for pretty much anything that would increase the funness of the game but not break adequetely built robots. This would make it hard for teams to host their own competitions off season though... That would have to be worked out.

i'd love to see something that was more of a challenge to drive (like moving objects on fields, that would be awesome :p), and possibly even slightly longer matches. also, if there were moving parts of the field, they would need to be randomly controlled via computer. that way it's different every time, and there's no ref playing favorites. nice, fair, and fun. the second level (if there was one) would have to be shielded (so a robot couldn't fall off) or just very low (so a robot won't shatter when it falls), but preferably the first choice. the competitions could be very interesting, but we need to break from the carpet (even the rookies are getting sick of it! :D).

Did anyone else ever have a problem with moving on a hard surface? Our 2001 robot shook like mad if we tried using our skid-steer driving on something like concrete or asphalt. This year, our robot doesn't do it since we had suspension :)

Carpet is fun. Anyone else ever have the fun task of prying carpet out of the axles? Fun stuff...

Our robot actually moved better on a hard surface. The belting we used for our wheels actually gave us too much traction, and it made it hard for us to turn on carpet. On concrete it turned perfectly, though.

same thing happened to us. on tile floor, our robot worked perfectly. on two layers of carpet (SBPLI) it didn't work until we did some boarderline legal stuff (it was technically legal, as long as we kept our wheels from spinning and tearing carpet). after the season, we took the modifications off, and tried it on asphalt. it shuddered a bit when we turned, but overall worked much better on asphalt than carpet.

while i dont think that sand or pebbles will ever be used, it would be interesting to have a new surface, and i think the the sirface itself should become one of the opstacles. it would be cool if they used miniature speed bumbs or uneven platforms the would make it harder for the robots to get around. and as for stairs, i remember seeing a tri-wheel design that was supposed to be able to climb up just about anything.

im going to second the motion for the rubber mulch, and hey while were at it why not bring the play ground too! Carpet sucks, enough said.

Ashley

wait wait... what if the playing field IS a playground, robots on monkey bars, going down slides... *giggles with excitement*

With other robots running around the maypole and flowers everywhere! Especially daisies because I like daisies. Then we can goooo swwiiiimmiing!!!!!

Err...ahh...enough of that.